Just Like His Father? Is nearly four years old now and my own son is nearly eight. At the time the book was released, scientists were still engaged in the genetics versus environment debate regarding the development of antisocial behavior. That debate is now over and every authority accepts that antisocial behavior and antisocial personality traits develop due to a gene-environment interaction. I am working on revising the book because now some specific genes have been identified.
Thankfully, I have not had to cope with the toxic environment a sociopath/psychopath creates for their offspring. Just Like His Father? doesn’t really grapple with that issue other than to encourage people to consider that the child may be better off with only one parent. At time the book was written, my thinking was based on two false premises. The first falsehood, I was taught in residency, “antisocial individuals abandon their young” has turned out to be perhaps the biggest problem at-risk children face. Antisocial individuals do not necessarily abandon their young, but they do abuse them and use them as pawns to damage other people and they also use them in their cons.
Four years ago, I naively believed that the family courts would naturally dictate that sociopaths/ psychopaths should be kept from harming their children. This second premise has also turned out to be false and is the basis for the nightmare many people I now count as friends are living.
It follows that in addition to teaching the material in the book and workbook, to save at-risk children we also have to take on the system-hopefully by working together. The system is composed of mental health professionals who really do not understand antisocial personality disorder let alone the meaning of psychopathic personality traits to parenting. It is also composed of Judges who want to make the tough decisions easy by giving themselves judicial sound bites to go by. Here is the official mantra of the state of New York Family Court:
“Visitation by a noncustodial parent is presumed to be in the child’s best interest and should be denied only in exceptional situations, such as where substantial evidence reveals that visitation would be detrimental to the welfare of the child.”
The important words there are “substantial evidence.” Just what constitutes substantial evidence? I am working on researching the answer to that question and have access to an extensive online law library through the university where I teach.
I am preparing a generic document that people can use as a resource regarding the harmful effects of parenting by antisocial individuals and emotional and verbal abuse on children. Some recent research shows that the developmental damage done by emotional and verbal abuse is as severe as that due to physical and sexual abuse.
But we really have to change the legal mantra. Given what we know of genetic risk, we have to not only protect at-risk children from abuse, we have to provide them with an enriching, nurturing environment to prevent the intergenerational spread of disorder. The new mantra should be:
“In cases where one parent has antisocial personality disorder (psychopathy) the child deserves the best upbringing the least disordered parent can provide.”
AND
“The least disordered parent has a right to live life free of the sociopath/psychopath they were conned by.”
Setting the least disordered parent free facilitates his/her mental health and contributes to the well-being of the child.
Here is what you can do to join this effort:
- If you went through a custody/visitation battle and your children are old enough for you to comment on how the battle and the sociopath affected them please write me. I am especially interested in talking with offspring over 18 about their perspectives.
- If you have an ongoing situation you are willing to share please write. Recently, people from Alabama and New York asked me for help so I compiled the case law for those states. The goal is to compile the case law for every state then make the info available on the web.
- If you want to volunteer to read the case law and help me organize it, I’ll put you to work right away.
- If you are an attorney or legal assistant who wants to help please let me know.
- If you have political connections, we need you.
I am looking to form a committee of workers committed to this cause.
Last but not least, I regret the title of my book because it suggests gender. The title merely reflects my own personal experience. This is NOT about gender or fatherhood versus motherhood. Normal men love and nurture their children and I do not dispute that children need that love and nurturing. This is about a psychiatric disorder for which there is no proven treatment, antisocial personality disorder/ psychopathy.
We are working to save the most vulnerable of all children from abuse, neglect and disorder. We are advocating for those children who carry genetic risk for antisocial personality disorder and who have a mother or father who is not capable of loving and nurturing them.
Contact Dr. Liane Leedom at drleedom@lovefraud.com.
Warning: Long, drawn out and self involved post coming.
My lovely 32 year old daughter who is hard-working, responsible and outwardly successfull, who teaches 2nd grade for a living and has 4 children 8 and under, (the youngest 2 of which I nanny 5 days a week), who got a DUI in November, and who was so ashamed she wanted to off herself, who has struggled with anorexia and bullemia since she was 16, whose husband just last December was so worried about her, he almost sent her to treatment and threatened to take the kids and leave, whose long term physician said,”do an intervention, NOW, she needs help,” whose whole identity is based on being perfect, and seemingly well adjusted and responsible, and long suffering, who had a blood clot in her leg after her first child was born and landed in the hospital for a week, and who has had to have 2 or is it 3 heperon shots to the abdomen every day of every pregnancy there-after, is now 2 months pregnant with twins. AAAAAARRRRGH.
I have spent the last 6 or so years feeling kind of sorry for her, because I know how hard it is to care for young children 24 hours a day, and also keep a full time job that is centered around 20 or so 7 year olds.
I have offered to babysit so that she and her husband can have a night out, over and over again. I am day-care for the youngest 2 at about half the price of a normal day-care.
Ever since November when she got the DUI, I have had to take up the slack and stay late, so she could make court dates, probation appointments, get a hardship liscence, have the devise serviced, etc. etc. etc. I’m not getting home til close to six in the Evening. I get up at 5:30 AM and leave at 6 to take care of her children…that is 12 hours a day…for 2 bucks an hour.
She has told me she can’t afford to spend another dime on childcare. that there are two days a month when she feels like she has any money, (pay days) but the moneys gone the minute the bills are paid. She had 2 really important medical tests done this week, due to pregnancy and history of blood clot, a dopplar screening and a sonogram, and told me she didn’t have time or money for either test, and thought that if she was meant to have a healthy baby she would. Oh, hurray. No time or money to insure her health, but I know…let’s have twins!
She will be my age when these babies make it to 18.
She and her husbands attitude has always been, let
s let nature take it’s course and if we are meant to have a baby, we will. Well…….
She asked her sister to baby-sit last Sunday so she could knock out community service hours, (due to DUI and probation) but my other daughter, uncharactoristically said no. She and her own family had made plans. Pregnant daughter was indignant, and felt slighted.
I let her know yesterday that I thought that she and her husband had been really foolish to allow this to happen, and I was pretty upset by the whole thing, and she is pissed at me for not being happy for her.
I think she is so unhappy underneith her facade and soo F’d up, that the only thing she can think of to do to make herself feel valuable and to make her life meaningfull is to produce babies.
Do I feel guilty? Well hell yeah. I was a pretty self centered and narcissistic mom. I feel like shit about it and I want her to be happy. I don’t know. I’m just sick about this. Help.
I even wonder if in some warped way she thinks that being pregnant will keep her from drinking and starving and binging and purging…she has always put the babies first when pregnant and has NOT done those things in the past…but if so, Hurray! we have a solution for the next 7 and a half months. Then 18 more years of not having the time to wipe your ass or pick your nose. 18 more years of no money, no relaxation, no time to enjoy life. ARGHGHGHGH.
She told my other daughter last December that she drank because it kept her from purging. OMG. Is it true. Maybe. Is it an addicts lie and denial? Maybe.
Her husband had a couple of really personal conversations with me privately, in December. He was so upset, angry, frustrated and worried about his family and didn’t know what to do….I know, let’s have twins.
There is no talkining to my daughter. She is smart articulate and a great debater. She is stubborn and defensive and really, really invested in her image of perfect, happy baby-maker.
OMG. Am I projecting my own feelings onto her? How on earth can she do this to herself?
hi Kim, whoa that’s a big one. 🙁
I am wondering about your self care in all of this. you are putting yourself out a lot to help her, already. now, she has made it impossible for you to help her stay on her feet. she will fall down. in the process she may take her family down with her. this woman needs treatment badly.
Start thinking about how you will take care of YOU. i can see the demands coming hard and fast from her – and by meeting them, her family will be enabling her in keeping her facade intact.
I will probably delete my above posts later. I love my daughter and am not trying to bad mouth her. I have always been really proud of her, but I just feel that she is NOT HAPPY. She won’t talk to anybody.
Kim – you are not bad mouthing her! I get such a strong picture of her hell from your writing. She does need professional help. You know the drill from program – everyone finds their own ‘bottom’.
There comes a point in our efforts to support others that our compassion needs to be funneled in another way – so that people are not enabled. I know you know this stuff. I know she’s your daughter and this changes everything; and yet, it doesn’t, right? We have to give our best love to them, and sometimes that’s taking the best care we can of ourselves, which will cause us to step aside a bit, and for the other to fall.
I have a lot of experience of women with anorexia and bulimia in program. i know that ‘perfectionism’ that they struggle with. truly, it is the most challenging and devastating thing i have seen people struggle with. I’ve been in rooms full of people all perfectly coiffed, beautifully dressed, perfect make-up – all starving to death, bodies wasted and minds gone too. And even though your daughter is not in that state – she has that disease, and its driving force, which is destruction.
YOU know that we need treatment when we cope with these problems day in and day out. I need treatment for my compulsive eating, and will work on finding some once my project is done.
Kim ~ I don’t post on here often, but read everyday. I just had to tell you how sorry I am and give you some cyber thoughts and prayers.
Please don’t feel that you need to delete your original post, in no way does it sound like you are trying to “bad mouth” your daughter. It sounds like a concerned mother who loves her daughter very much and has nothing but her best interest at heart.
When we as mothers, see our adult children hurting themselves over and over and can do nothing about it, it is sheer hell. Somehow they feel that we do not have a vested interest in what they do with their lives. It is impossible to talk to them, reason with them or sometimes even love them. We see the great value in their lives, they do not.
Ofcourse, her decision to have more children not only effects her, but you as well. You are the caretaker of those children while she works. You have every right to voice your opinion to her.
Like Joy says above, take care of yourself and hopefully your daughter will find the treatment she so desperately needs.
Thanks, One/joy. It helps a lot to know you get it. Especially the perfectionism.
She is not, at this time, at that point of physical deteriation you write about, but when she was 16 she was hospitalized in a pediatric/ adolescent psych unit and force fed with a tube down her throat. She weighed 82 pounds. She is 5 foot 8, so I’m tellings you, she looked like walking death.
It has never taken over like that, since, but she still has the problem. I see the effects in her children. It’s uncanny. they don’t have a clue what’s going on, but everyone of them is preoccupied by food, in one way or another. Oldest boy always has to be eating, and oldest girl went through a phase last Spring where she wouls announce proudly that she hadn’t eaten breakfast or lunch. She also became very aware of weight issues, declaring over-weight people as fat. (I corrected her on that.) Somehow or other, that doesn’t seem to be an issue, anymore, but it sure had me worried. She was 5 years old.
My daughter talked to her Sister on the phone last night, and told her how unsupportive I was being, and that she and her family might have to move out of state to where her husbands family lives so that they could get the support they need. Now that’s just classic.
Thanks for letting me vent.
Thanks, Milo. I really apricate your thoughts and prayers. She’s a tough cookie and I know she’ll get through it. I’m afraid that at some point, the bottom will have to give out, in order for her to get better. I would prefer it if that didn’t have to happen.
Dear ((((((Kimmie))))))
1. Yeppers, your daughter has problems.
2. Yeppers she is not being responsible with birth control. (If you can’t afford the kids you have, you sure as sheeeet don’t need 2 mmore!)
3. Yeppers, she has a drinking problem—and you know how I feel about drinking and driving since my grandfather and 2 close friends were both KILLED by drunk drivers—and let the bodies hang for the crows!
4. YOU ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE for providing cut rate day care for her kids 12 hours a day for TWO DOLLARS AN HOUR?
5. It is NOT her sisters responsibility to drop her family’s plans at a moment’s notice so “mommie dearest” and her hubby can go out.
6. The PITY PLAY of “Mommy is not being supportive so we may have to move near hubby’s family for supportive people.”—think about this one kim, she told her sister this KNOWING the sister would tell you (so she is making a THREAT to withhold “love” and a pity play) to get you to KNUCKLE UNDER AND GET INTO LINE. This is nasty passive aggressive behavior—-and Yea, I’m talking bad about your daughter, but tell me I’m not right!
This whole situation is so that the FOCUS will be taken OFF OF HER and HER BAD CHOICES of drinking and driving and threatening to binge and purge….”I haaaaave to drink or I will binge and purge.” BULL CHIT! Even if that was true (it isn’t) she didn’t have to DRIVE AND DRINK in order not to binge and purge.
I think you have made a pretty good assessment of this situation Kim, and it is FARKED UP and now there will be 6 SIX kids involved in this dysfunctional situation instead of four.
YOUR DAUGHTER DEFINITELY NEEDS AN INTERVENTION, but my guess is that it will NOT help because she is not interested in getting well and healthy but in taking the heat off her bad behavior by getting others to take on her responsibilities.
If she doesn’t have you to sit for $2 an hour, she may have to find some way to pay for a sitter at the going rate, and she might have to face up to HER RESPONSIBILITIES, not expect someone else to.
Kimmie, I know that this is a PAINFUL SITUATION for ALL involved, your daughter, her kids, her husband, and for YOU as well.
But YOU have to do what is HEALTHY even if everyone around you is NOT doing the healthy thing. It just doesn’t pay not to, because when we allow ourselves to get hung up in trying to “fix” things for others we always have it explode in our own face.
Hang in there Kimmie! YOu are in my prayers! Love Oxy
Thank you, Oxy.
T funny thing is, I seem to be the only one who sees this as a bad choice. She and hubby are both, “excited” and think I am being a kill joy.
I was sobbing in the car, on the way home yesterday, and pretty much made my feelings known to her husband. He is a good man. Very responsible, loving and hard working, stable and quiet. I have always thought a lot of him…but just two months ago he was at his wits end…didn’t know what to do….was so defeated and overwhelmed with her problems. Yes, drinking was getting really bad, passing out on the front lawn, losing her glasses in the street, falling down the stairs…etc. etc. etc.
She was suicidal, starving, binging and purging and he and other daughter were going to take the Dr.s advise and do an intervention…then, there seemed to be some improvement, with the drinking and depression, at least, and all that seemed to go by the way-side. For all Hubbys good qualitys, he surely is in denial. I guess he thinks this pregnancy will fix things. Anyway, guess I have to accept all this.
I think I have been projecting my own stuff onto my daughter, though. Feeling sorry for her, trying to make her life a little bit better, and probably motivated by guilt. I need to stop that now.
She has made the choices she’s made and she will have to deal with the consequenses. This is not of my doing, and I’m tired. Actually a little surprised at her lack of responsibility, and self deception.
Thanks for answering me, Ox. I actually feel a lot better, now, that I’ve shared this.